For a long time I’ve been trying to use Skype as a replacement for my cell phone, which gets crappy service in my apartment. SkypeOut sounds like a great idea, but in practice it was unusable. People on the other end of the line always complained that I was too quiet, and the voice would drop out so much it was unusable.
In contrast, Gizmo works perfectly. I don’t even remember where it comes from, but gizmo is a very nice GTK2 app that provides features very similar to skype. Call-out, call-in, all that good stuff. The real difference comes in actually using it. Gizmo worked perfectly the first time, and I was able to call out right away with near-perfect fidelity. I actually had to turn the mic down a little!
I’m probably not going to get a phone number for it, even though it has 617 numbers, because it’s really difficult to make sure the PC is always ready to take a phone call. But, it will be very useful for dialling out to order delivery, call work, call my parents, or what have you.